King of Serpents
by Thyme
Summary: There's a reason people don't like Parselmouths...as Harry is about to find out. Set in summer after GOF, orig male char, haven't got the usual cast in yet, but they will be there! R rating taking better safe than sorry to the limits.


Ok, this is a redrafted version of a passage I put in a while back, because I actually thought of a plot to go with it J . So it hopefully makes more sense now. Original male character, hopefully far from a Gary Stu: unless it's TwistedSorceror!GaryStu J . From canon the main character is Harry – surprise, surprise - but most of the usual cast will be in eventually. 

WARNING: There are slight hints of slash in this – nothing graphic so far and I doubt there will be. At the moment you could simply change 'he' to 'she' without having to alter anything else, although it won't stay that way.

I'm new to this so would really appreciate any kind of constructive criticism, although frankly an J or L would be acceptable ;). Any tips on how to make my characterization better would be rewarded by gabbled and incoherent thanksJ . I'm good at those.

This is starting to become a bit nonsensical itself, so before you start:

~ dream ~

__

thoughts

---~~~--- P.O.V change

So wipe the babble from your mind and begin:

---------~~~~~~~~~~---------

Deep in the ground, tons of earth pressing down over it's head, the serpent sleeps, dreaming of the darkness it is bound to, and the warm feeble prey that it craves...  
  
An earthquake in Hong Kong sends a tremble through its bed, but it never wakes. Occasionally the movement will filter into its dreams, and they turn from serpent thoughts to stranger things…  


~ ~ ~ 

Smells of warm earth and crushed plants; prey with it's back turned, head down. Wholly unaware of the danger it's in. Hearing his step – he walks on two legs in this dream and wonders at the strangeness - the human in front of him turns. Lifting laughing green eyes to his, raising long arms to twine round his neck, breathing warm air against his ear it whispers something to him - something important he realizes he longs to hear. But the sounds don't turn into words, and he doesn't know what this creature that seems so unafraid, so warm in his arms, is trying to tell him.  
  
Glee laces each syllable trickling into his ear but they stand alone. With no bridge of language linking them together into real words they form a stream of alien human nonsense that whispers into his serpent brain, and doesn't find a home there.  
  
The words slip away, melt and run like ice water through his fingers -  
  
fingers! What a strange idea…  
  
- and then the dream flees too. He chases after it, running through the dark caverns closing over his head, towards the garden that's always just out of reach and the lone human who doesn't run away, who laughs up at him, and whispers mysteries in his ear…  


He runs in an endless, useless attempt to return to the dream, but only a cold stone passage stretches before him. Then even it vanishes into thin air, snatching his legs out from under him, and he falls. Trying to rise he discovers that his legs have merged into a long tail, whipping frantically. He cries alarm, and only a wordless hiss is the result.  
  
But this is what I am…why I should I regret the other form?  


~ ~ ~

  
The giant serpent's length shudders, thick skin rippling as the human soul tries to escape, struggling against the spell binding its mind to the serpents thoughts and form. 

He tries battering at the enchantment, tearing at it with fingers that break up and shrivel away as the serpent overmind rejects them. The human form withers away, soft skin and fragile limbs becoming a fleeting memory once more. Exhausted, the humansoul falls back to the depths, and the great snake's dreams return to warm blood spilling, flesh tearing, green eyes glistening with tears then turned red with blood…  
  
…green eyes? 

Their dreams twist round the image as both minds agree on prey, and begin the hunt –

------ ~~~~~~~~~ -------

~ ~ ~

Feeling his eyeball burst in its socket was a relief. The little fleshy sound was almost lost through the roar in his ears. Then he reached up to brush at the pain and his fingers went _through_, the unpleasant squelch loud in sudden silence. The noise of fear and suffering, all the screams and moans and whimpers – smothered by the hush. 

The desperate fight still played out before him like a silent movie, fighters falling and rising up, falling and lying; broken dolls all stained with bright paint. He knew that they wouldn't rise, shut his eye against more deaths that he hadn't fought against, and knew what this was. 

He opened his eye. Raised his hands into his restricted vision and examined them. Tanned from the long summer, calluses from flying, bitten nails. Blood. Clear fluid dripping.

I should be screaming now, he quietly reminded himself from the remains of his head. 

__

Why aren't I? I should be in agony – I know what that feels like – nothing like this. 

He pondered this, slowly turning it over in his mind. 

__

Wait – this is me! This voice is me, and I am not screaming, I'm not hurt at all! I think… 

No. I'm not hurt, so my hand – that can't be my hand, that mustn't be my eye, that body isn't me at all!

This is me, this voice is me and nothing else in this place! And I do not want to be here any longer!

He looked up, and the battle he had been watching in horrified silence faded, breaking up like morning mist, leaving him alone in the dark. Or so he thought, until the darkness flowed before him, revealing itself as a cape. Slower than planets the figure turned to face him, revealing only a hood shading any features. 

His scar tingled and then ceased the ache that had nagged at him throughout this…dream?

'Hello…?' Harry said, suddenly and inexplicably confident that this was a friend. 

The hood tilted upwards, just enough to reveal a jutting chin and smiling mouth. Harry waited expectantly for an answer – but only a forked tongue emerged to lick the thin lips. Then a soft hiss came, almost inaudible to Harry, but it shook the world. The gaping wound that was his right eye flared into unbearably real agony, and the nothingness that the two stood in shivered, shivered and broke, and Harry fell, away from the blood and death, and this figure that had claimed his dream.

~ ~ ~

He fell, and only knew when he landed that he had been falling at all.

He blinked, and disbelieving, reached up to run a finger across each eyelid. They met only unbroken skin, and he let go the breath caught in his throat. 

'We-ell.' He hissed in annoyance at the stutter, glaring at the peeling paint on the ceiling. A rustle to his left told him he had been audible to Hedwig at least – an improvement. Last week he had cowered under the blanket for half an hour straight, waiting for Uncle Vernon to pound on the door after his scream on waking. He had only emerged when he tried to whisper Hedwig over and no sound came. 

'Well. It was one of the weirdest so far, but it didn't have You- didn't have Voldemort in it at least. Just someone, someone who made my eye – '

He gave up – the stabbing pain was the only thing he remembered clearly, and he _really _didn't want to think about it. 

'Not one to write away about anyway…?'

A hoot of agreement was the uncharacteristic reply from Hedwig.

He grinned: she had been flying relays from Hogwarts with all the dreams he'd been unable to write off. 'Go back to sleep, huh girl?' For himself, he rolled over and reached under the bed for his schoolbooks. And for once he went straight for Divination – the only subject guaranteed _not_ to mention eyeballs.

~

The figure with the night-dark cloak was left alone in the crumbling dream. He made an abrupt gesture to cease the decay, but found it insufficient. The boy was long gone, his original dream in unreadable shards. With a last exasperated hiss, a sweep of his cloak ushered him from the dreamscape and his brief sanity.

~


End file.
